CCBill review: costs and rules for adult merchants

What CCBill charges a new adult merchant

CCBill does not publish a processing rate. Older reviews still quote figures like 3.9% + 55¢ or 10.8% to 14.5%, along with plan names such as Complete and Blue. Those plans are gone from CCBill’s published offer, which now has two account types:

• PSP account: your site is a subaccount under CCBill’s master merchant account, billed at a flat rate with no monthly fee. CCBill handles PCI compliance, assigns the merchant category code and deals with the acquiring bank.
• ISO account: your own merchant ID and a direct relationship with an acquiring bank, priced as interchange plus, tiered or discount plus, for higher volume.

Your actual rate comes in a fee schedule sent at sign-up, and CCBill can change it with ten days’ written notice.

The $1,950 card brand registration

Visa charges $950 and Mastercard $1,000 a year to register a high-risk merchant, and adult is high-risk. CCBill collects the $1,950 and passes all of it to the card brands. You can pay in one go, or in six weekly deductions if your main account received at least $158.33 a week over the last three months for Visa, or $250 for Mastercard:

The fee covers a merchant account and all its subaccounts, so a network of ten sites on one account pays once. Renewal starts about three months before the anniversary date. Miss it and weekly reminders follow, and the registration is usually canceled between the second and third one.

CCBill payout schedule and the cost of each method

CCBill pays every Monday for the billing week that closed on the Saturday nine days earlier. The billing week runs Sunday to Saturday, transactions are reviewed on Tuesday, and the payout goes out the following Monday, or the next business day after a US bank holiday. New accounts are paid once the signed contract has been verified. You can also ask to be paid every few weeks, or only once your balance reaches an amount you choose.

A US merchant will normally pick ACH, the cheapest option. ACH Express is billed at $15 as an introductory price. A Canadian merchant has neither ACH nor SEPA and is left with mailed or FedEx checks. In the UK, SEPA only works with a euro account. A returned or rerouted ACH costs $20, and a check that never arrived can be stopped and reissued after ten business days for $30. Each subaccount can split its payouts among up to ten payees by percentage, which is how many sites pay a partner or a content producer.

Who can open a CCBill merchant account

To take Visa and Mastercard through CCBill, your business needs a legal and commercial presence in one of 44 listed countries: the US, Canada, the UK and the rest of Europe, down to Gibraltar, Monaco and the Isle of Man. India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, the Philippines and every other country outside that list are excluded as places of incorporation.

The company, or the sole proprietor, must be registered in a listed country, have a principal in that same country and hold the business bank account there. The application asks for two forms of ID, and the details must match the documents exactly. Your site must be live and complete, with products, visible prices, contact details, terms and a privacy policy, and CCBill asks for temporary access to the members area. A welcome email with your login and account number follows the compliance review.

Buyers can come from anywhere. Payment forms run in 15 languages, including Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese, and in six currencies: US, Canadian and Australian dollars, euros, pounds and yen. CCBill Pay, the stored wallet that holds up to 25 payment methods, works on English forms only, and ACH checkout is limited to US buyers paying in dollars.

Ticket size and billing periods

By default, a CCBill transaction must fall between $2.95 and $99.99. Going outside that range takes a written request approved by upper management, which takes one or two business days and may be refused. One-time purchases grant access for 2 to 365 days, and subscriptions rebill every 30, 60 or 90 days. Weekly billing is not on that list, so a site that sells weekly passes or a $149 yearly membership has to sort it out before launch. Subscriptions and physical goods must run on separate subaccounts.

Site rules in CCBill’s acceptable use policy

Beyond the usual banned content, the policy sets operating rules that can get an account suspended:

• the paid area can’t be down for more than 24 hours at a time, or more than once in any 30-day period,
• a recurring site updates its members area at least as often as it bills, so monthly for a monthly plan,
• trials and recurring charges are disclosed clearly on the site,
• images added to the CCBill payment page are non-sexual and show no nudity,
• no blind links: buyers know they are opening a payment form,
• no part of the site sits on a free host,
• no wording suggests the card is used to verify age.

Banned content follows the card brands and extends to domain names and meta tags: extreme violence, incest, rape, bestiality, scat, mutilation and anything suggesting minors. You also keep the US age records for every performer.

An account or subaccount with no orders for 90 days, or whose payment page can no longer be reached from the site’s home URL, can be deactivated. If an account is suspended for misconduct or suspected fraud, CCBill can cancel every rebilling member and hold the money for six months to a year, without notice.

Closing a CCBill account: the six-month hold

When an account closes, CCBill holds all funds owed to the merchant for at least six months to cover refunds, returned checks and chargebacks. That is on top of the security deposit taken from each transaction and held for six months by default, which CCBill can raise at any time if it sees more risk. The deposit percentage isn’t published. Leave in June and the last of your money arrives around December.

Either side can cancel with ten days’ written notice, and email or phone calls don’t count. For one year after leaving, you can’t go directly to CCBill’s acquiring banks or service providers.

Why is CCBill.com on my bank statement?

Because CCBill bills on behalf of the website, the buyer’s card or bank statement shows CCBill.com instead of the site’s name. For a merchant, that means CCBill fields the cancellations and refund requests. Its buyer support runs 24/7/365 by chat, phone and online form, and buyers can cancel, update a card or recover a password without contacting the site.

Refunds carry no processing fee: CCBill debits the refunded amount from your account, and the buyer sees it within 7 to 10 business days. Partial refunds aren’t available for every transaction type. Merchants may never key in a customer’s card themselves. CCBill also keeps a negative database that blocks buyers who charged back before, and plugs in Ethoca and Verifi alerts.

Is CCBill legit?

Yes. CCBill was founded in 1998 in Tempe, Arizona, is headquartered in Phoenix, and its Irish and UK subsidiaries are licensed payment institutions, under the Central Bank of Ireland (C569018) and the Financial Conduct Authority (936980). The US company, CCBill LLC, is a registered payment facilitator for Esquire Bank in New York. CCBill is PCI DSS Level 1 and says it serves more than 30,000 merchants.

Its Trustpilot score is 1.5 out of 5 from 112 reviews, on a profile the company hasn’t claimed. The complaints are mostly about unrecognized charges and hard-to-cancel subscriptions. A buyer unhappy with a site reviews the name on the statement, which is CCBill’s.

Strengths and limitations of CCBill